pressing ‘go’ on a crowdfunder: a Conversation with Benjie Talbott

This is a longer conversation than previous posts, I wanted to try and capture the experience of getting ready to press ‘go’ on a kickstarter – hopefully Benjie’s insight will help you, dear reader, on your journey. As ever, if you like what you read, share it far and wide, and maybe sign up at the bottom of the blog.

Finally, you’ll notice that Tenby successfully funded – so what’s written below is now extra useful!

Joe: Tell me a little about your game Tenby, where did it come from.

Benjie: A few years ago, it felt like time for a change. I felt like I was a boat on a river, and the river was just kind of going and I was flowing along with it. I realised that I really wanted to try and do something that came entirely from me and see if I could just see that through to the end. 

I was working between five and ten different games ideas at different points just pushing each forward a little at a time. There came a point last year, where my partner said ‘you just got to pick one mate, you just got to pick one, take it to the end, 100% it and see how it goes’.

“…you just got to pick one,
take it to the end, 100% it…”

Earlier in that year, I’d come up with this idea of a feature matching game called Tenby. Tenby is just a really colourful town in Wales and it was a pretty obvious inspiration point. Initially, the game was supposed to be only about coloured buildings, putting them next to each other and making patterns. I made a load of cards, there were a couple hundred cards. I had a set of cards but no game. I shelved it.

It was only when my partner told me to focus, I decided to get it back out and get it on the table. Pretty quickly came up with a really good action drafting system to complement it and it grew from there. That’s where Tenby came from.

Joe: Your background is in music composition, but here you are a board game designer. I assume you are a lover of all things board games were they something you were interested in?

It was the early 2000s, we were riding that new board games wave. From then it’s always been there, every Christmas there was a new board game that appeared on the shelf and there has been ever since (perhaps a lot more frequent buys more recently).

I’ve been designing games as a hobby for maybe 10 years on and off and trying with different people.Then last year I felt like it was something that I knew I wanted to pursue more actively and independently. I had to decide that this is just going to be something I’m going to have to push myself to do alone.

Joe: Thank you. I think I first saw Tenby back in January and was immediately drawn to the artwork – I think you had me hooked from the first image I saw! Is Tenby an important place for you?

Benjie: It is a special place. My mum died nearly six years ago; she used to take me and my brother on family holidays to the Welsh seaside, to West Wales and South Wales quite a lot. So Tenby is very much in my memories from early childhood. But it’s also my modern life as well; for me and my partner, it’s one of our favourite places to go. So Tenby honours my childhood and my life now. I hope people will take it that way.

Joe: Oh, that’s lovely. I’ve never been to Tenby but I’m keen to visit. When the Kickstarter is over, I’ll take the cards with me and match everything up!

Joe: On Sunday, this Sunday, you’re going to press the big crowdfunding ‘GO’ button. How are you feeling?

Benjie: I have no idea; literally no idea. It’s one of those things that’s sort of like looking to the future and there’s just a big blank ‘to be decided’ space. I’m feeling excited and nervous and all those things you might expect, but I have very little preconception about how it’s going to go. You follow different Kickstarter campaigns and, from the outside, it always looks to be very official, well run. I’d love to think that other people would look at my campaign and think that as well. But I have no idea!

Joe: That’s how it looks to me! So why Sunday, what that date?

Benjie: It’s an amalgamation of different things. There’s a lot of people on Instagram who have received a copy to play and have posted really positively about the game. I really wanted to take advantage of that. I didn’t want that just to be out there for a long time but for a game never to turn up.

Tenby is a labour of love and it is very much something I want to see succeed. But it’s also a test project. I’m a big believer in really understanding a process. The way that I‘ve planned this whole project is about using it to learn as I go.

I met with Frank West of City of Kings last year. He’s a really lovely guy, really open. He gave a really good rundown of where he’s at. I definitely recommend checking out his blog. He’s very much like Jamey Stegmaier figure, in terms of  being open and transparent about the process of games design. I could have dragged it out and I could have waited for the game to have a bigger following, but this is about me keeping it simple and figuring out if it’s something I want to do with my life.

Let’s say it just funds – I need something like 200 people to buy the project – in some ways it would be the ideal situation. It means I’ve got a small cohort to take care of. I get to see the whole process from start to finish. I get an idea of if I’m going to enjoy the challenge of doing all the business back-end like fulfilling and following through.

On the other end of the spectrum, if it ends up going crazy, that’s also great. It will have its own set of challenges.  And if it doesn’t fund, then that’s life, and we’ll have to make some more decisions from there on.

Joe: So you say that there’s a few things to come together that bring you to Sunday as your go day. I’m just wondering, are there any numbers you’ve reached? Are there any particular tipping points that you’ve spotted that make you a little bit more confident?

Benjie: I think that’s a really interesting question. For me, it comes down a lot to philosophy and how you conceptualise the entire process. Because I’m used to working in music and writing, I believe that you should write what you like, and create what it is that you want to digest and display that in the best way possible and hope that people will come and see the quality.

“I believe that you should write what you like, and create what it is that you want to digest and display that in the best way possible.”

With that in mind, I do feel somewhat deficient in terms of business acumen, in terms of looking at those numbers and going, “Oh crap, that’s a lot of people I need”. Maybe it’s a half and half of wilful ignorance versus philosophical grounding, I suppose, in not engaging with that too hard and just trying to spend time focusing on what it is I can control, which is the quality of the thing that I’m putting out there and how much I enjoy the thing I’m trying to put out.

Again, it’s more for me about going through the process, learning things and figuring things out along the way for myself. Because, almost always, those are the better lessons to learn.

Joe: That’s a great philosophy to have. You’ve mentioned the excellent feedback you’ve been getting on Instagram about the game – how did you get there?

Benjie: It’s been really lovely to get such positive feedback. I did two prototype runs, both of 10 copies, made everything that I could, but then printed all the cards. The first prototype, which was a little rough around the edges, but mechanically pretty sound, got a lot of really good feedback to the point where I sort of kind of disappointed because I didn’t know what I was going to do. 

I think I was kind of disappointed because I wanted there to be lots of things that I could be like, “Oh, yeah, that could be better”. I don’t mean that to say in sort of an ego boosting way; I genuinely really like criticism. It was kind of, I suppose, a bittersweet surprise really to find that actually it was a pretty good game and people were enjoying it.

The second prototype run that people are playing now was sent out at the beginning of January. It included a lot of graphical updates, rule clarifications and a couple of gameplay changes, but not much. It’s been really nice to read the posts people are making about the game. I’ve just been putting together some bits for the campaign story of reviews from people and going back through what people have been saying. I feel like if they’re being honest about it and then this stands maybe a better chance than I was thinking.

Joe: That’s a good position to be in. When you press ‘go’, do you have a strategy?

Benjie: In one sense, yes. In one sense, no. For the past five years I’ve saved every single Kickstarter campaign update, from different campaigns. They’re all in my archive in email somewhere for reference. So I can look and say “Okay, this is the kind of thing that people say.” I’ve read those and understand what I’ve liked about them – the kind of frequency of the emails, what’s too much, what’s not enough.

I’ve got a pretty concrete plan for stretch goals. Again, another really interesting chat with Frank West, the City of Kings guy, I came away from that conversation more aware of how to communicate your intentions. His advice was just show the first couple and make them attainable goals. I’ve done a bit of a halfway house, the funding amount is probably going to be £5500. The first stretch goal is going to be at £6000, then sequentially every £500 up to £10,000.

There’s a couple of big things in there; what will happen is I’ll send out an email to everybody that\’s involved in the project when each of those stretch goals has been reached.

Joe: Thank you for your time Benji, it’s been great chatting. I appreciate your time, particularly in this busy week. Good luck with Tenby!

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